


hunger for this

by Wildehack (tyleet)



Series: Author's Favorites [9]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Cannibalism, Light Vore, M/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2017-07-18
Packaged: 2018-12-03 17:41:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11537193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tyleet/pseuds/Wildehack
Summary: For about a week he finds himself staring at Charles’s mouth.More specifically, at Charles’s teeth.





	hunger for this

**Author's Note:**

> So, there's no actual cannibalism in this fic, although there is some seriously unsanitary stuff that I'm extremely hesitant to call bloodplay, but which I GUESS might qualify as bloodplay. Or maybe it's......extremely mild vore? 
> 
> The title is from Siouxsie and the Banshees. 
> 
> It's post-series and Charles is alive. Don't worry about it. 
> 
> All thanks to @marmolita for reminding me to stay true to my brand.

There are plenty of things to worry Jack after departing Boston, and plenty more to worry him after he discovers Charles Vane hasn’t been hanged in England after all. That’s not to speak of the worries he has after stealing Charles away from Flint, who apparently took possession of him in Teach’s absence, but after weeks of fighting and rescuing and almost dying, he keeps drifting back to one tiny, ridiculous thing.

“Charles,” Jack says, looking down the rail at the man he almost died for, currently staring blackly at the mess of Skeleton Island, receding in the distance. “Chaz.”

Charles turns to him, wearing the unimpressed look he always has when Jack tries to shorten his name. It’s why Jack does it. “The fuck is it?” Charles asks.  
  
Jack hesitates, wondering how to put it. “In Boston, Charles, I met a girl who had heard a series of—extremely disturbing rumors about you.”  
  
Charles’s expression doesn’t change. “And.”

Jack finds himself making a clawing gesture with both hands, as though this will somehow make all come out clear. Charles raises one eyebrow, and Jack comes out with it. “Have you ever cooked a man into a stew and eaten him?"  

Charles shrugs. “Yeah.”  
  
“ _Charles_ ,” Jack says, utterly scandalized. He supposes he must have suspected it was true, given how long it’s been—fuck, not _eating_ at him, _worrying_ him—but he didn’t want to believe it was true. “I—I refuse to believe it!”  
  
Charles smiles at him. Actually _smiles_ , puzzled but tolerant, as if Jack is fussing about murder or sodomy or petty fucking theft instead of cannibalism. “Have you never been becalmed?”

“I _have_ ,” Jack says, indignant. “For two weeks on the _Reliant_ , but we weren’t reduced to eating each other!”

“You got lucky, then,” Charles says. He squints at Jack. “Is this what’s got your feathers ruffled?” he asks, amused, and Jack straightens his spine, aware that the breeze is, in fact, stirring the feathered fringe of his new coat. “It’s just meat, Jack.”

Jack can’t quite muster up an argument, but he makes sure Charles catches his revolted look before stalking off to talk to someone sane.

*  
  
The thing is, losing Charles was one of the worst things to ever happen to Jack in his entire life, and getting him back was one of the best, and he’s really fucking irritated to have it spoiled by the nightmare he keeps having of Charles gnawing on a human spine and then looking at Jack like he’s starving.

He knows Charles is glad to see him again, too, is maybe the worst part of it. Honestly, Charles came within a hair’s breadth of _dying_ for Jack, so he’s pretty well assured that Charles gives a shit about him. Charles had wrapped him up in a fierce embrace, let Jack choke out something sentimental and humiliating into his ear like _I thought we lost you_ , gripped the back of Jack’s neck with his hand and leaned back to smile at him like he really had returned from the dead, and was determined to do things differently this time.      
  
All these months when Jack thought he was dead, he’s been grieving like. Well, not like it was Anne in the ground, because Jack has no intention of outliving Anne by so much as a quarter of an hour, but like he’d lost someone a great deal more important to him than his friend and former captain. No one had understood, except Anne, and Anne had been less interested in indulging him than in persuading him to keep on living.

This is all to say that Jack is well aware of the fact that he’d die for Charles Vane, and that Charles might not be opposed to accepting a friendly hand in the dark before they reach civilization, only he can’t _do_ anything about it because now Charles has _eaten a man_.  
  
Jack doesn’t know how to look at someone who’s eaten a man, much less discreetly proposition him. 

*  
  
For about a week he finds himself staring at Charles’s mouth.  
  
More specifically, at Charles’s teeth.  
  
*  
  
“Jack,” Charles says patiently, and Jack realizes with a start that this isn’t the first time Charles has said his name. They’re sprawled out in Jack’s cabin, sharing a bottle of fine wine pried out of Rogers’s stores, and neither of them is quite drunk but Jack has been staring at Charles’s mouth and wondering what man stew tastes like. Also what it looks like. He’s imagining a skull bouncing around a pot, although he knows that’s likely just fancy.

“Yes,” Jack says, forcing his gaze up to Charles’s eyes, currently creased in a suspicious squint. “What is it?”

“Anne’s in Boston?” Charles asks after a minute, and he must be drunker than Jack realized, because of course Jack has already told him about Anne’s hands, her heroism in the face of Rogers’s villainy, how she’d had to stay behind even though it almost killed her.

“That she is,” Jack says, pouring a fresh libation for himself, since clearly he needs to catch up. “Recovering from her wounds with Max to look after her. If you can believe that.”

Charles nods a few times, and Jack busies himself with his wine, trying not to think about how the crimson glitter of it in the candlelight might be exactly the same as the broth in Charles’s fucking stew. (If Anne were here, he thinks sullenly, she could tell him why this bothers him so much. But she’s not, which means Jack has to muddle his way through his horrors himself.) “She and Max,” Charles says slowly. “They still--?”

“—Hopelessly in love,” Jack confirms, with only a slight twinge of guilt. Anne hates him talking about her private affairs, but surely it can’t count when Charles already knows everything. “Emphasis on the hopeless.”

Charles pours himself more wine. “And you and them,” he says, rubbing his mouth with his hand, which has the effect of dragging Jack’s attention back to his fucking teeth. How has he never noticed that Charles has exceptionally long teeth? “You’re not.”  
  
“No,” Jack snaps, his distraction making him sound more irritated than he actually is. “We’re not, not at the moment. Jesus, Charles. Any other gossip I can catch you up on, now that you’re back from the dead? Silver was fucking the Maroon princess, but I understand that ended badly—possibly because Flint was also fucking the Maroon princess, or maybe Flint was fucking Silver—rumors are split on that one––“  
  
“I was never dead,” Charles snaps right back, slamming his cup down on the table. “And I don’t care about that shit.”  
  
“So it’s just my business you’d like to pry into?” Jack says, rescuing his cup from Charles’s wrath. “Touching.”  
  
“Your business is my fucking business,” Charles growls, and plants both hands on the table, such that Jack is reminded of exactly how browned and enormous they are, knuckled over the edge.

“I don’t see why,” Jack says, with a very small sneer, and maybe the wine is going to his head after all, because he misses the moment when Charles goes from irked to vexed, and finds Charles suddenly on the other side of the table, crowding Jack up against it, wine sloshing in his cup.  
  
“It’s my business,” Charles says silkily, towering over him, solid and dangerous and very much alive, “because you’re staring at my mouth.”  
  
Jack’s own mouth goes abruptly dry, and he can’t think of a single thing to say. It’s not you, it’s your teeth? Because for all the horrors he’s seen, and all the horrors he’s committed, apparently he does still have a line in the sand, and Charles crossed it years before he met him? Because Charles _died for him_ and Jack wasn’t sure he believed Anne about how badly he wanted Charles to fuck him until after the fact, and he’s still getting used to the idea? Because there’s always been something making Charles Vane untouchable, whether that’s Eleanor Guthrie or Edward Teach or being dead or being something from Jack’s nightmares, and Jack doesn’t know how to fucking _touch_ him.  
  
“Jack Rackham lost for words,” Charles says, and he smiles. Flaunting his predator’s teeth. “Now that’s a sight to see.”  
  
Jack moistens his lips. Charles has more or less bracketed him with his body, and he’s feeling an odd mixture of longing and fear that’s leaving him sort of queasily aroused, and talking around it isn’t easy. “Charles,” he says, before he figures out what he wants to say. “You—you know I wouldn’t—that I’ve always held you in a particular, well, _esteem_ , and I’d never. Presume.”  
  
Charles lifts one of his enormous hands off the table and brings it to Jack’s neck, his thumb swiping roughly at Jack’s jaw, just under his ear. Jack shivers, loses the train of his speech, and realizes the expression on Charles’s face is something like tender, which is—amazing, and horrifying, and—he can’t be expected to process things like this without Anne to help him make sense of it, it’s not _fair_. “Shut up, Jack,” Charles says fondly, and kisses him.  
  
Jack fumbles wildly in Charles’s grip, his hands skating ridiculously over Charles’s ribs, and Charles’s arms, and end up somehow tangled in Charles’s hair. He opens his mouth to—protest, or process, or—he opens his mouth, and Charles presses his advantage like a proper pirate, shoving his tongue into Jack’s mouth. He also steps forward into Jack, which is—something, and uses the hold he has on Jack’s neck to bend him down backwards over the table, covering Jack with his body. Jack finds himself hanging onto Charles’s shoulders for dear life, returning the kiss out of sheer self-defense.  
  
Charles breaks away so they can breathe, and for a dazed second they just stare at each other. They’ve spilled the wine for sure. Then Jack makes the mistake of digging his fingers into Charles’s ribs, and Charles nips at his lower lip—with his _teeth_ —and Jack makes a high-pitched sound that he’ll be embarrassed about later. Charles grins down at him, pleased with himself, and Jack would be more irritated by that if he could work out whether he is hungry or sick, but he doesn’t have time to decide, because Charles is pressing a series of biting kisses to his jaw, and Jack feels _caught,_ like a fish jerking hopelessly on a line.

“Charles,” Jack says urgently, shivering because Charles is—goddamn it--chewing on him. He says Charles’s name again, and again when that has no effect. He has to try and wrestle back control, because Charles is still fucking manhandling him, one hand pinning Jack to the table by his chest, the other skating down his belly to expertly wrestle with Jack’s belt, and any minute now he’s going to discover that Jack is—

“What the fuck.”  
  
\--less certain about the proceedings than Charles observably is. Charles has gone blank-faced, standing up and away from him. Jack scrambles up to his elbows, breathing hard, and says: “It’s not what you think.” 

“That so,” Charles says, perfectly flat. “’Cause it seems like you don’t want to fuck me.”  
  
“I do,” Jack says, in frustration. “Dammit, Charles, you know I do.” And Charles _does_ , because Jack’s always been obvious about it, enough so that the Ranger crew was always asking if the captain had washed Jack’s shit off his dick yet, even though Jack was faithful to Anne in those days.  
  
Charles crosses his arms, and makes a ridiculous, defensive gesture that melts Jack’s black heart a little. “Then what?”  
  
Jack briefly considers blaming the wine, but for all his sins, he’s never been a coward. He swallows, levers himself up to sitting, and says: “I—keep thinking about you eating a man!”

Charles blinks. “What?”  
  
“You cooked a man into a stew!” Jack says, slapping his thigh for emphasis. “Self-admittedly!”

Charles glares at him. “That,” he says with dangerous slowness, “was eleven fucking years ago.”  
  
“ _You’re still a cannibal_ ,” Jack says, only it sort of comes out as a shout. He tugs a little at his own hair. “Forgive me if I need some time to adjust to the idea!”  
  
“Half the men in Nassau are cannibals by that standard,” Charles says incredulously, and Jack launches himself off the table, to pace around the cabin. “It was a matter of survival,” Charles continues. “I survived. You’d rather I hadn’t?”

“ _No_ ,” Jack says angrily, scrubbing a hand over his mouth. “I just—apparently I still have illusions, Charles! Anathema is anathema, and I can’t just—stop thinking about it.” It’s more than that, but he doesn’t know how to say it—it’s this unease he feels when he’s close to Charles, even though that’s all he fucking wants, _home_ and _Anne_ excepted.  
  
Charles looks utterly disgusted with him, and a pit opens up in Jack’s stomach. Of course that was it. Of _course_ he got Charles back and still managed to make him unfuckingtouchable. “I apologize,” Jack says stiffly. “I assure you, you still have my respect, and my—highest regard.”  
  
Charles sighs sharply, then strides over to the wreckage of the table, and picks up the cheese knife. Jack barely has time to say “What are you--?” before Charles has him shoved up against the bulwark.  
  
“You nearly died for me,” Charles says roughly, the words brushing against Jack’s cheek. Jack grips his elbows instinctively. “That right? Calico Jack Rackham leading the vanguard? Sacking a city in Charles Vane’s name?”  
  
“I—yes,” Jack says, because it’s true.  
  
Charles sneers at him. “And you want me. For years, you said.” Jack gives him a stiff, humiliated nod. “But you’d deny me. For no fucking reason.”

Jack heaves a frustrated sigh, only to flinch when Charles brings up the cheese knife and slices open his own thumb. It’s a shallow cut, but it bleeds. Jack jerks back, hitting his head against the bulwark. “What in God’s name are you—“  
  
Charles presses his bloody thumb to Jack’s lips, stopping his mouth. “I don’t believe you,” Charles says, and it sounds like a threat.  
  
And Jack will never be sure what possesses him, except that Charles is alive when Jack thought he was dead for months, and Anne is his partner but she will never be his wife and he’s sick of wanting without having, but he lets Charles push his bloody thumb into his mouth. It’s wet. Salt and copper flood over his tongue. “You’re the same as me,” Charles says harshly, and Jack shudders against him, sucks on his filthy fucking thumb. “We’re exactly the same.”

Jack is about to issue another denial, but then Charles drops to his knees and he can’t speak at all.  
  
“You can _touch_ me,” Charles says irritably, before reaching into the opened placket of Jack’s trousers to his nervous prick and swallowing him down.  
  
Jack can’t quite get in enough air. Charles is—good at this, practiced in a way that makes Jack want to re-evaluate the last decade of his life, and he can still taste Charles’s blood on his tongue, and some frightened animal part of his brain is still gibbering about how Charles could _eat_ him, Charles could _devour_ him, Charles will leave nothing left of him if Jack gives him anything else.  
  
Charles makes a frustrated sound around Jack’s dick, which is rising at last to the occasion, and grabs for Jack’s hands, hanging loose at his side. He puts them pointedly in his own hair, glaring up at Jack before doing something criminal with his tongue that makes Jack choke a little.  
  
He pulls, hesitantly, on Charles’s hair, and Charles wraps his hands around Jack’s thighs. Urging him on. He yanks harder, and Charles makes a very soft sound that goes straight to Jack’s spine.

Jack’s in love with him, is the problem. He’s never been in love with anyone besides Anne. Isn’t sure how to trust him with it.  
  
“You’re right,” Jack pants, because he always finds it difficult to stay quiet during sex, and because Charles deserves to know. “You’re right, it’s not—about the cannibalism, although I really am—“ Charles very gently scrapes him with his teeth, and Jack flinches into him. “Not, ah, not important.” He fists his hands in Charles’s hair, sucks in an unsteady breath, and blinks up at the ceiling while he gets out the next part. “It’s just—you died, and that was. Awful. I don’t want to do that again. You understand?"  

He doesn’t quite dare to look down at Charles, but Charles just hums around him, redoubling his considerable efforts. When Jack comes, Charles pulls off and strokes him through it. Jack’s bent over almost double, trembling with the force of it, his hands snared in Charles’s hair.  
  
“Not dead,” Charles rasps into his hip, head still bowed. “Wasn’t ever dead.”  
  
Jack strokes Charles’s head with one shaking hand. “I know,” he says.  
  
“I’m right here,” Charles says.  
  
“You’re right here,” Jack agrees, and he means _this is my fucking heart_ , means _take it_ , means _eat_.

**Author's Note:**

> I live at wildehacked.tumblr.com if you wanna come yell at me about Jack and/or Charles and/or cannibalism. Feedback is always appreciated. :)


End file.
